Redirect
"Hard" Redirects A redirect is a bit of code that forwards the user's browser to a new page. Creating redirects is helpful when there is more than one possible title for a page, or many different ways a user might search for a particular topic. Creating redirects for potential titles helps your users find the existing page, and also helps to prevent the accidental creation of duplicate articles. How do I create a hard redirect? To make a page redirect to another, simply type this on the page: :#REDIRECT Page title where Page title is the name of the page you want this one to redirect to. You can also use: :#REDIRECT Page title#Section This will redirect the user to a section header. Use this sparingly, because if someone who is unaware of the redirect changes the title of a section, the redirect will no longer go to that section but will take you to the top of the page instead. Using either lower case #redirect or upper case #REDIRECT will work. The #redirect line must be the first line of the page. All other lines below it will be ignored. Example Instead of creating duplicate articles for Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker on the Star Wars Wiki, you might want links Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker to point to the same page. If you want that page title to be "Anakin Skywalker", then "Darth Vader" should be a redirect. The Darth Vader page would contain this: #redirect Anakin Skywalker How do I change a redirect? It is possible to change the Darth Vader redirect by editing it. First, try visiting the Darth Vader page, which redirects to the Anakin Skywalker page. Then, below the title of the page, you will see the text: : (Redirected from Darth Vader) Click this "Darth Vader" link to go back to the redirect page at Darth Vader. You can then click "edit" to alter the Darth Vader page as usual (making the redirect point somewhere else, or replacing it with a new article) like any other wiki page. "Soft" redirects A soft redirect is a very short page that essentially tells the user to look at another to obtain the information they were seeking. See Link for more information about linking in a soft redirect. The technique is most often used when redirecting users across wikis, especially where cross-wiki redirects are disabled. On such a wiki, the text of a hard redirect will be displayed, but will not actually take the user to the other wiki. How do I create a soft redirect? To make a page soft redirect, simply type this on the page: :See Page title If a page is relevant to more than one wiki, it may be best to place the page on just one wiki, and make a soft redirect to it from the other wiki. Advantages of this are that it brings the two projects closer together and prevents duplication of effort. Why should I use soft redirects? On some wikis, interwiki redirects are disallowed. Even where such redirects are allowed, normal or "hard" redirects can be undesirable. The page containing the redirect cannot be easily edited, because there's no "Redirected from title" message on the destination page. Therefore, there is nothing to click on to take you back to the redirect page, and clicking on a link to the redirect page takes you straight to the redirect's target. The correct URL must be handcrafted to reach the page. There are also problems when cross-wiki redirects create infinite loops. MediaWiki software does not evaluate created by internal loops, to prevent these problems, but it is harder to detect loops created between different wikis. What about soft redirects to categories? Redirecting both hard and soft to a category now works. In the past, it didn't. Prior, a soft redirect was needed instead. :For example, w:Wikia policies includes a soft redirect to the policies category. If the category is located within the same wiki, an alternative to redirecting to the category may be to use the DynamicPageList extension to include a list of the category's contents inline in the current page. The introductory text from the category page may be included as while the list of items in the category may be included with DynamicPageList codes: category=whatever This approach will not work if the desired content is on another wiki or on an external site. In that case, it is best to use a soft redirect. What is a "double redirect"? A double redirect is a redirect page that points to another redirect page. Since the Wiki only redirects you once, you will find yourself at the second redirect page. For example, suppose that Darth Vader points to Anakin skywalker (lowercase s) which points to Anakin Skywalker (uppercase S). Then visits to the Darth Vader page be forwarded only once and stop at the Anakin skywalker redirect. To fix this, click the (Redirected from...) link on the Anakin skywalker redirect page, to go back to the Darth Vader redirect. Edit Darth Vader's redirect to point to Anakin Skywalker. You can see all the double redirects at . What is a "broken redirect"? A broken redirect is a redirect page that points to a page which does not exist. This may be because the page has recently been deleted, or the redirect is pointing to the wrong place (e.g. spelling mistake). To fix this, simply edit the redirect page to change the link in the to go to an existing page. You can see all the broken redirects at . Ajax Redirect on Developer wiki AjaxRedirect adds a button to the page edit drop-down menu to quickly redirect the current page. It will work regardless of if the page exists or not. See also Redirect on wikimedia.org Category:Wiki Markup Category:Code